Office 365 goes live

Microsoft's Office 365 Home Premium has gone up for sale, with the cloud-centric productivity suite launching in 162 markets ahead of its business counter part's arrival next month. The new subscription-based Office Home Premium version is priced at $99.99 per year for use on five computers - including PCs, Macs, and Windows tablets - and includes access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access, together with an extra chunk of SkyDrive storage.

Home Premium users get 20GB of SkyDrive space, as well as 60 free world calling minutes in Skype each month; they can also access Office on Demand via the PC browser. Students, meanwhile, can have Office 365 University, which comes at $79.99 for a four year individual subscription.

You'll need to be a college or university student, or a member of faculty or staff, in order to qualify, however; it'll be available in 52 markets. On February 27, meanwhile, Microsoft will release Office 365 for businesses. It's not clear how much subscriptions for that will cost yet.

Whichever version is used, the Office.com hub will serve as a central access points for all cloud-based documents, as well as the point of entry for Office on Demand. Earlier today, Microsoft added the full Office 2013 downloads to its online store.